Robert Morton Opus 2401 - 3/17 Billmire Residence

Opus 2401 is currently owned and played by David Billmire, who kindly recorded the samples for our use as a VTPO. David has added several ranks to the original eleven; a Posthorn, French Trumpet, Orchestral Oboe, Musette and Flute Celeste, plus the Vibraphone. 

This organ has an interesting history. The Empress Theatre, featuring a seating capacity of 500 to 600 seats, primarily served the African American community. When in the ’fifties the building was razed (as was the fate of so many similar theatres) the organ was removed from the structure and moved to the theatre owner’s house. Following this, it was sold to a farmer in southeastern Ohio who didn’t complete its restoration, but eventually sold it to a person in the ’seventies who installed it in his house. Before its completion, however, the new owner was killed in an auto accident, and the organ was adopted by a friend of his, David Billmire, the present owner, who completely rebuilt it over the next 6 years. All the pipe work, professionally restored and finished by Wilson and Duddy , has been returned to its original voicing.

Robert Morton Opus 2401 3/17 Billmire Residence Specification

Donation and Order Forms:

This project, although free for personal and non-commercial use, will be donationware based and released by Melotone Sound Productions. Your donations to the project will help us to continue to develop new sample sets and improve the equipment and techniques used in their creation.

Projects like the Robert Morton Opus 2401 Series are time intensive and are released on the understanding that users will donate towards the time spent on creating them. A donation of US$99.00 or more would be appreciated for a sample set of this size. Please go to the PayPal Donations page if you are able to make a donation. 

Then go to the Donationware VTPOs Order Form page to fill in your information, and we will send you the link to download the sample set.  

The sample set requires that the Robert Morton Opus 2401 - Original 3/12 Series  has been installed. The download is just over 380Megs in size. With the Robert Morton Opus 2401 - 3/17 Billmire Residence sample set fully loaded, the Hauptwerk executable will be using approximately 2.2 Gigs of RAM. This sample set will load in Hauptwerk Free Edition by loading some of the samples in MONO to save on RAM resources, but Hauptwerk Basic Edition is the minimum recommended HW Edition - as you will then be able to use the samples in Stereo, and with the 1000 notes of polyphony rather than the 256 polyphony limitation that comes with the Free Edition.

Demos

On October 25, 2014, Misha Stefanuk surprised his date with two songs he’d written for her—"Steffie" and "Rebecca". He played them at his pre-show at the Strand Theater in Marietta, GA. The reception was more than pleasant; it was, indeed, a much better gift than flowers! Misha has kindly provided us with these two new tunes as part of the demo tracks of this sample set.

Steffie

Nola and Polly have a new sister! Steffie is a newborn tune by Misha Stefanuk, written just a short time ago in the tradition of novelty songs that used to be so popular in the times when music mattered. Misha has some impressive composition credentials, including music on almost every US TV channel, and even a recent onscreen appearance as "the organist" on Constantine, NBC. In his own words, there is not many things to do that are more fun than playing a theatre organ! Reverb has been added.

SoundCloud: Steffie

MIDI: Steffie

Rebecca

Another girl-inspired original by Misha, surprising influences from Charlie Chaplin (as a composer) and Ennio Morricone. If you ever wonder what would have happened if those two met, wonder no more, here comes Rebecca! And what a wonderful orchestral instrument this is, a dream to play! Reverb has been added.

SoundCloud: Rebecca

MIDI: Rebecca

Collegiate Sam

Les Deutsch playing "Collegiate Sam", by Benny Davis and J. Fred Coots (from 1929). This is another of those college-themed novelty tunes that were so popular at the time. It is about what we would today call a “big man on campus” dressing strangely and getting all the girls. Les' arrangement is based on the recording by Harry Reser’s Syncopators, also from 1929. The theater organ lends itself perfectly to these pseudo-hot-jazz-band studio arrangements. In Les' adaptation he presents a wide variety of registrations, with and without trems, and includes the tuned percussions and even the cymbal. Reverb has been added.

SoundCloud: Collegiate Sam

Somebody stole my girl

Misha Stefanuk playing "Somebody Stole My Gal". This is a popular song from 1918, written by Leo Wood. In 1923, Ted Weems & his Orchestra had a five-week run at number one with his million-selling version. It is also known in Japan as the theme song used by Yoshimoto Kogyo at its theater in Osaka. The song has been featured in several Hollywood movies including:  Somebody Stole My Gal (1931), Little Jack Little & Orchestra (1936), When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950), My Favorite Year (1982), The Grass Harp (1995), Melinda and Melinda (2004) and The Aviator (2004).

SoundCloud: Somebody Stole My Girl

MIDI: Somebody Stole My Girl

Bird in a gilded cage

Les Deutsch playing “The Bird in a Gilded Cage”, by Harry Von Tilzer and Arthur J. Lamb. This tune was composed in 1900 and was one of the most popular tunes of that year. It is also recognized as being the very first tear-jerker song, serving as a model for those that followed. Les has arranged it in a serious fashion as it might have been played at the time. This song has very lush registrations, including the distinctive Robert Morton strings. Dynamics range from a Tibia solo to something close to full organ. The vibraphone and chimes are also featured. Reverb has been added.

SoundCloud: Bird In A Gilded Cage

Crescendo Configurations

License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code (the full license).

Disclaimer

You are free:

    to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work

    to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

    Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

    Non-commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

    Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

With the understanding that:

    Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

    Public Domain — Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.

    Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:

        Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;

        The author's moral rights;

        Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.

    Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.

Attributions:

The samples for this organ were recorded by and are the property of David Billmire.

• Chimes

• Chrysoglott

• Orchestral Chimes (Glockenspiel)

• Xylophone

• Harp

• Clarinet

• Concert Flute 

• Diaphonic Diapason 

• Flute Celeste

• French Horn

• French Trumpet

• Orchestral Oboe

• Kinura

• Musette

• Saxophone

• Tibia Clausa

• Tuba 

• Vibraphone

• Violin I

• Violin II

• Violin III

• Vox Humana 

All the noise reduction, tuning, looping, and creation of release portions was performed by Graham Goode.

The default registrations and default MIDI file were defined/recorded by Misha Stefanuk. [Thanks Misha!]

Voicing guidance was provided by the Alpha and Beta testing groups, and special thanks to Les Deutsch and Ted Williamson for their hard work in this area.

The Hauptwerk CODM and ODF were created by Melotone Sound Productions.

The graphics are created from photos taken by David Billmire, edited and made into the Hauptwerk GUI by Graham Goode.